Wanting Children and Wanting K2

This week I focused more on the online readings over the book and found “‘Wanting the Children and Wanting K2’:The incommensurability of motherhood and mountaineering in Britain and North America in the late twentieth century” very interesting and also a source of debate, for a couple of reasons. To begin my response, this is coming from a woman who does not want children, and seeks travel and adventure over ‘domesticity.’

I found this reading an interesting work in that it focuses on an issue that is faced everyday in the world for women, whether they are mountaineers or not. The notion of a ‘selfish mother’ is something that comes up often for mothers that choose to have a family and also work, but it seems that fathers do not face this same issue of being seen as selfish. I found it interesting that this article points out how the women who mountaineer with children get a lot of heat from the media and the mountaineering world, for the reasons that they could potentially be abandoning their children and leaving them without a mother, as if to say that life without a mother is much worse than life without a father. In picking apart mountaineering, and labelling it as a sexist sport, I can see the sexism actually going both ways. On one hand we have women who are also mothers being seen as selfish if they pursue this sport, but it could be seen as un-masculine for a man who is also a father not to purse this sport. This brings in the question of who the more valuable parent is, which in my eyes is undebatable, and brings out a double standard.

Susan Frohlick writes about men being able to travel more freely, while the woman is bound to ‘domesticity,’ a term that is brought up quite a bit. Mothers are seen to focus solely on their children and being ‘domestic’ where as a man is seen to be able to focus on travel, work, and worry less about possibly abandoning his family, as if the man is to give 25% to his children and the woman is to make up for his missing percent and give 75%, unable to travel like the man gets to, and put herself in extreme circumstances.

While, my opinion may be out of the ordinary due to my lack of maternal instincts, I see the trouble in this double standard that is laid out for women that want to mountaineer and men that want to mountaineer. I think that women should be able to experience adventure, heights, and breaking new grounds as much as men get to, and if a man does not need to make a choice between that life and children, a woman should not have to either. Wanting children is obviously a responsibility that women will have to fulfill in their lives, and if men want that same, then both should get the same choice in their other activities outside of the home. Taking the risk to climb a mountain and achieve something great for oneself should be a right for anyone, and gender should not have to affect that right.